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- Mason, Lucy R., et al.
(author)
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Population responses of bird populations to climate change on two continents vary with species’ ecological traits but not with direction of change in climate suitability
- 2019
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In: Climatic Change. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 0165-0009 .- 1573-1480. ; 157:3-4, s. 337-354
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Climate change is a major global threat to biodiversity with widespread impacts on ecological communities. Evidence for beneficial impacts on populations is perceived to be stronger and more plentiful than that for negative impacts, but few studies have investigated this apparent disparity, or how ecological factors affect population responses to climatic change. We examined the strength of the relationship between species-specific regional population changes and climate suitability trends (CST), using 30-year datasets of population change for 525 breeding bird species in Europe and the USA. These data indicate a consistent positive relationship between population trend and CST across the two continents. Importantly, we found no evidence that this positive relationship differs between species expected to be negatively and positively impacted across the entire taxonomic group, suggesting that climate change is causing equally strong, quantifiable population increases and declines. Species’ responses to changing climatic suitability varied with ecological traits, however, particularly breeding habitat preference and body mass. Species associated with inland wetlands responded most strongly and consistently to recent climatic change. In Europe, smaller species also appeared to respond more strongly, whilst the relationship with body mass was less clear-cut for North American birds. Overall, our results identify the role of certain traits in modulating responses to climate change and emphasise the importance of long-term data on abundance for detecting large-scale species’ responses to environmental changes.
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- Musila, Simon, et al.
(author)
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No lunar phobia in insectivorous bats in Kenya
- 2019
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In: Mammalian Biology. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 1616-5047. ; 95, s. 77-84
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- We monitored foraging insectivorous bats along walked transects in forest and farmland at Arabuko-Sokoke Forest in coastal Kenya, using a heterodyne bat detector. The main purpose was to test whether aerial-hawking insectivorous bats that feed in open places (in this case mostly Scotophilus and Scotoecus spp.) show lunar phobia, i.e. restricting their activity on moonlit nights. Such behavior would be an expected response to the threat posed by visually oriented aerial predators such as bat hawks, owls and carnivorous bats. The occurrence of lunar phobia in bats is a controversial issue and may have implications for how bats will be affected by increasing light pollution. Our results show that foraging activity of the bats that we studied was related to time of day, season, and habitat, albeit with no additional effect of moonlight discernable. We therefore conclude that foraging activity occurs independently of moonlight. This result is partly at odds with previous findings including predictions from a meta-analysis of lunar phobia in bats, which indicates that lunar phobia is common in these animals, though most likely to be present in tropical species that feed in open situations near vegetation and over water. Equally, our results conform to findings from studies of aerial insectivorous bats in tropical as well as temperate areas, most of which have failed to reveal any clear evidence of lunar phobia. We believe that moonlight generally does not facilitate aerial predation on flying bats in open situations, or, alternatively, the bats accept increased predation pressure while they fulfil the energetic requirements through hunting.
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- Stephens, Philip A., et al.
(author)
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Consistent response of bird populations to climate change on two continents
- 2016
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In: Science. - : American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). - 0036-8075 .- 1095-9203. ; 352:6281, s. 84-87
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Global climate change is a major threat to biodiversity. Large-scale analyses have generally focused on the impacts of climate change on the geographic ranges of species and on phenology, the timing of ecological phenomena. We used long-term monitoring of the abundance of breeding birds across Europe and the United States to produce, for both regions, composite population indices for two groups of species: those for which climate suitability has been either improving or declining since 1980. The ratio of these composite indices, the climate impact indicator (CII), reflects the divergent fates of species favored or disadvantaged by climate change. The trend in CII is positive and similar in the two regions. On both continents, interspecific and spatial variation in population abundance trends are well predicted by climate suitability trends.
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